Walker Catches Evers Plagiarizing Parts Of Budget Proposal

WISCONSIN -- Gov. Scott Walker says that opponent Tony Evers copied major parts of his 2019 biennial budget proposal from other sources, a fact that the Evers campaign is attributing to "staff oversight." Walker, a Republican and Evers, a Democrat, are both vying for Wisconsin's governorship, and are scheduled for their first debate Friday night at 8 p.m.

According to a story published in Politico Friday morning, the Walker campaign learned of the copied text, and alerted the national media outlet. Politico is reporting that several parts of Evers' budget came from other sources: "The largest example of text taken from another source without attribution examines summer learning loss. Fifteen paragraphs of Evers’ document is nearly identical to a 2016 blog post written by an intern for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank based in Washington, D.C.," Politico reported.

Whoever wins the Nov. 6 election will be able to propose the education budget to kick off the legislative debate in early 2019.

Earlier this month, Walker announced that he was restoring the two-thirds funding for public education - making both he and Evers in favor of increasing education spending for the 2019-2021 biennial budget.

His opponent, Evers, released his 2019-2021 biennial budget proposal on Sep. 17, 2018 calling for a restoration of two-thirds funding.

Provisions of Evers budget proposal (in his own words):

• Makes an unprecedented $600 million investment in special education, increasing the reimbursement rate from 25 percent to 60 percent, while expanding funding for English learners and rural schools.
• Provides nearly $64 million more for student mental health funding, a tenfold increase over the previous budget.
• Funds full-day 4K for our youngest learners, creates the state’s first funding stream for after-school programs.
• Establishes new opportunities for children in our largest urban school districts.
• Reforms our broken school finance system to help districts of all sizes, including revenue limit fairness so lower spending districts can catch up and all districts can plan for the future.
• Achieves two-thirds state funding of our schools without raising property taxes.

Evers proposed budget calls for $15.4 billion in state funds for K-12 schools in 2019-21. That figure is an increase of 12.3 percent from the $13.7 billion that was allocated during the 2017-19 budget. No specific dollar figures were released by the Walker campaign as of Monday morning.

The two-thirds funding commitment was calculated on a statewide basis and may have been higher or lower than two-thirds for an individual district depending on their per-pupil cost and equalized value, according to the Governor's office.

Walker said that state leadership did away with the two-thirds funding commitment under Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle in the 2003-2005 biennial budget.

Walker made the announcement public on Monday, Oct. 15. “We will fund two-thirds of school costs in our next state budget. Our good fiscal management and positive reforms, plus a strong economy, allowed us to make the largest actual-dollar investment in schools in our state budget while still lowering property taxes. Looking ahead, we will fully restore the two-thirds commitment made by former Governor Tommy Thompson. Tony Evers wants to undo our reforms. That would take money out of the classroom and away from students and he would allow property taxes to go up to pay for it.”

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